From the sprawling lawns of Kanota Palace (Jaipur - Jan, 2017) to meadow like spread of green carpet at Madhubani Hotel (Dehradun), it has been a long journey. I remember Sanjeev Ji (The Hon Advisor of Valley of Words (VOW2017) - An International Literature and Arts Festival which spread its creative wings last week i.e. 17th - 19th Nov, 2017 in Dehradun) talking to me and Aswani about his vision to create a festival, where all forms of creative expressions is given a platform.

Hon Gov K K Paul of Uttarakhand inaugurated the festival.

A festival that does not necessary have to engage crowd pullers but the real thinkers, philosophers, who will ensure that the echoes of its engagement will move beyond the valley of Doon and reach out to the readers, artists and creative people beyond boundaries.

The Group behind "VOW2017"
If you can spot me, I am 3rd from the right in the first row.

It has been an honour to part of this Festival from inception to completion. So here I am sharing my journey of VOW - The Road To Dehradun, through some of the pictures I have had taken over the year.

The beginning of the journey...
Sanjeev Ji, Aswani, Atulya Mishra, Anjani and Jasbir at Kanota Palace

Valley Of Words launched..
After almost 6 months, we were ready with the Logo, Vision & Mission

Some of the Advisors, who were there with us from the beginning and
some joined us on the way...

And as usual, behind every successful event, there is
The Power Of Women

And then there were these amazing people from the Valley Of Words
The Volunteers who ensured that each of the authors were happy
and
Contended
We are grateful for things you guys have done and things
that you have done and not many people noticed.
All the bags of goodies from VOW2017 including the 'First Day Cover'
you guys ensured. Thank you team and Rohan & Neha you guys did it

From the Old Dehradun Literature Festival - DELTA
We Changed to...

The New Dehradun Literature Festival - Valley of Words

And then the woo-ing started with thought leaders not the crowd pullers..
Some could come and some could not come... but then it was all
about 'Being there, Doon That'

And many workshops that have changed the out look of
VOW2017 Festival

Tried to get thinkers and thought leaders as many as possible
Some came and some had to drop like Keshav from HINDU

But in reality, we started in real earnest the day this happened...

Two hundred days to go and we tightened our belts...

Reached out to our Authors, Resources and panelists

Reached out to our friends Indiblogger as the Blogging Storm
was on its own way to the valley of words...

On The Road To Dehradun - At Hilton Bengaluru

And it happened in Blore and glad to say that we have had 100 Bloggers
to visit us at VOW2017 and 8 live bloggers...
(Sorry I have only pics of 3, please share yours I will upload it.)

And then this happened...
Behind every success, there is lot of work that goes un-noticed and
I must appreciate that behind our individual success, there was
our friends and the family that were behind us...
Supported us despite our whims and fancies

Finally as my friend Timeri N Murari and Maureen said, that it was one of the most friendliest festival they have attended, I will leave you with one of my own friendly moment, thanks to Bobby Cash, who I have made a friend for life.

Thank you Bobby Cash - The Echo of Valley and the lovely friends,
Readers, thinkers and the flag bearers of "Valley Of Words"

Aug 31, 2017

After my book 'Songs of the Mist' was published and ranked 29th in Amazon.in in first week of April, I got connected with my publisher 'Story Mirror', whose founding partner Devendar Jaiswal, liked it so much that they wanted to publish it in Hindi. I remember at the time of signing the contract, he told me that his editorial team was unanimous in selecting the book. That's how 'Kuhase Ke Geet' came into existence and doing wonderful in the market. As I moved into Blore, Deven wanted to launch it in the city as well, so on the sidelines of 'Road to Dehradun' - a curtain raisers of sorts to one of the most interesting events happening in Dehradun, where Story Mirror is partnering, he once again launched my book. So here it is some of the images from the Hilton Hotel - EGL, Domlur - Bengaluru...

Valley of Words (VOW): An International Literature and Arts Festival (17th - 19th Nov, 2017 Dehradun), is an identity which not only incorporates Doon Valley, but also goes beyond it. Doon is a Valley, which has nourished and nurtured literature and art over the millennia, and continues to do so. It also reminds us all of the resplendent beauty and the myriad colors of the Valley of Flowers, and 'words' shows how so many ideas and thoughts can be encapsulated.

The Road to Dehradun is a curtain raiser of VOW partnership with Bloggers - a road show going on to various cities starting with Bengaluru. On 20th Aug, at Hilton Hotel - EGL, Bengaluru the program was unveiled in association with IndiBlogger and Story Mirror.

So here are some pictures from the event, to give you an idea, how a serious literature festival is focused towards giving Bloggers a chance to come to the mainstream of writing, interacting with Authors and with the support of Story Mirror become a published author as well.

Jun 26, 2017

Few months earlier, I was watching the movie ‘Accountant’ and heard Ray King says “Some of us a wait life time for opportunity to knock at our doors, only realising that it has, once it is gone,” and it triggered a desire to know why do we end up in such a situation. Why, despite all our material success, we are still not happy. Well one of the obvious reason is that we just don’t know happiness. Most of the times we are too busy with the day to activities, to open the door when the happiness knocks or if we do attend the door eventually, we don’t recognize it to be the ‘opportunity’ that we were looking for.

But why I am telling you all this in a post about Happiness? Well there is a connection. You see, most of us see ourselves as Karma Yogi. We do things that come to us and try to do it well. Here let me explain it through Krishna’s most famous advice from Bhagwat Gita in the shloka - ‘Karmanye mavadhikaraste…’

“The Karma yogi is the person who does things that assigned to him as karma, with all sincerity and hard work, and does so without focusing on fruits of his action.”

And I believe the key is in understanding ‘what comes to us’ as an opportunity knocking on the doors, is what cosmic design has ordained for us - something that we can relate to, at deeper level, and that alignment is what makes us happy.

Basically the real connect to happiness is to recognize that aligned opportunity and having done so, we need to take some steps towards creating happiness within our day to day life…

Key Steps to Happiness - Sit Still & Haiku

Over a period of few months of living alone, I have realised that stillness is one of the basic requirement on the path to happiness. When you do so, you end up taking few involuntary steps…

1) De-clutter

Life lies in wait to

Steal some moments of living

From chaos of mind

2) Connect

Empty souls, searching

Meanings of existence, in

Voids of love; Alone

3) Create

Echoes of soul song

Flowers into milky way

Across path of love

And as stillness always leads to creativity - a gateway to happiness, I worked out a method in my long isolation from family and friends - A method to flower happiness and bliss in one’s life…

ICEDIP Mindsets - Creative process of Happiness

“Everything takes time Yogini and you have taken the first step. Take another and then another. We live our life in the steps, not at the end. When the time is right, you will find your space in universal design. That space is the reality of our consciousness; rest is layers upon layers of memories, desires, and insecurities of mind. The problem is that within these layers, we lose the sense of our purpose and drift along like the clouds in the sky, inadvertently bringing rain or sunshine in our lives. But if we dive deeper into the awareness of our being, we will find the true purpose of our living (in turn bliss and happiness).” - Songs of the Mist (Page 23)

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WORLD'S TOP SPIRITUAL BLOG - 36TH RANK (2016)

SPOTLIGHT - PROMOTING NEW AUTHORS

Spotlight is my small effort to support upcoming authors in their effort to reach their readers. And yes, it is FREE, however to be featured in this section, you need to go through a selection process, please click here for details.

Writes Poetry, Haiku, Spiritual Fiction, most of the times about Spiritual and blissful living. He enjoys spiritual journeys across India / High on Himalayas or floating below in depths Ganges, on a self-exploration trip, all the while trying to work out that elusive enlightenment, which every one talks about but, most of the times, don't find.

... and he ends up writing about these experiences at his blog "Shadow Dancing With Mind", which is considered to be India's #1 Spiritual Blog (last three years) and has been listed #36 in top 50 spiritual blogs of the Planet this year.

MY BOOK - 1 OF 'THE MONK KEY' 3 PART SERIES

Songs of the Mist

SONGS OF THE MIST - An Introduction

"Many of us here yearn for something more in our life. Shashi has provided a spiritual release in his beautiful book, "Songs of the Mist". It’s unusual and thought provoking book. The book answers questions that we struggle to frame in our daily lives. Shashi’s descriptive beauty of the mystic nature of Himalayas interwoven with sufferings and the heartaches, and the struggle of each protagonist, provide eloquent and thought provoking read. Not a book to be browsed at glance and to reach books full potential demands commitment and investment of time to savor its subtlety and do grows." - Timeri N Murari (Famous Author, Script Writer and Journalist) speaking about “Songs of the Mist” at an evening of Art, Music and Writing organised by Apparao Galleries at The Hotel Leela Palace